Backdraft (1991)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Lieutenant Stephen Bull McCaffrey	Kurt Russell
Prob. Firefighter Brian McCaffrey	William Baldwin
Captain Donald Shadow Rimgale	Robert De Niro	½
Ronald Bartel	Donald Sutherland	½
Jennifer Vaitkus	Jennifer Jason Leigh	½
Senior Firefighter John Axe Adcox	Scott Glenn	½
Helen McCaffrey	Rebecca De Mornay
Prob. Firefighter Tim Krizminski	Jason Gedrick
Advisor Martin Swayzak	J. T. Walsh	½
Ricco	Clint Howard

Review

This high-budget 1991 success about firefighters and arsonists in Chicago has got the subtlety of a B-movie, with its overdrawn pathos and characters. Every single action-scene in here feels like a choreographed set-piece and is scored in the most melodramatic way by Hans Zimmer. But the film has got the scale and insistence to become fairly interesting nonetheless, not least thanks to Donald Sutherland’s great little cameo as an incarcerated arsonist whom our main protagonist uses as his Hannibal Lecter to solve the mystery. The cast is star-studded but uneven; Kurt Russell and William Baldwin fail to convince.